Thursday, July 28, 2011

Part of my 'plan' for moving to the US from Glasgow involved moving back down to England for a month before heading overseas. Our flat contents would take six weeks to ship over so it seemed sensible to minimise the amount of time we would have over there without our things and I also thought it would give us a 'mini' summer break before we left, helping us acclimatise to the warmer weather.

Thursday, July 21, 2011

My home for the next four weeks is my childhood home. It has always been home to me, no matter where I have lived, I have always said “I’m going home next week / tomorrow / later”. Confuses the hell out of people :)

What would the future hold?!

Marlow, Buckinghamshire. This is where I grew up. We moved here when I was eight and Mum & Dad have lived here ever since. I lived here till moving to University in Manchester, then came back for a few months before I moved to Birmingham and then on to Glasgow and now on to Maryland. I think this house will always be my home until my parents don’t live here any more.

Nick shows off the height of fashion...

I know I have my own home, with my own family, but I feel very lucky that there is still another place where I feel safe and secure, where Thomas sleeps through the night and I can get some rest (especially after the craziness of the last few weeks!).

Growing up

It isn’t really about Marlow, it’s about my family. I feel really lucky to have that and I hope that my children feel the same about the home I make for them.

David has left for the US now so it’s just me and T for the next few weeks. We plan to have days out and spend time with the grandparents and catch up with old friends. Lots to do but not hectic madness, which is good as I get a bit more pregnant and start to feel a little less invincible…

Thomas and Daniella continuing to feel safe at the grandparents house!

Sunday, July 17, 2011

Inspired by a post by the Blog up North, I've been wondering what blogging means to me. I started blogging as a way of making a page for my doula services. I'd written a dissertation as part of my doula training and I wanted to get it out there. Then I realised that I could actually use a blog as a place to write down things that happened to me. Maybe things that Facebook friends knew about, or wouldn't care about, but also to expand on news when I wanted to write more than just a status update.

I started to do the Gallery and Silent Sunday routinely, as a way to get into the parenting blogging community, to hopefully meet more like-minded people. People with young children, people who enjoyed photography, and maybe just other people like me! I have found some brilliant people. Mañana Mama makes me smile on a regular basis, with her fabulous stories and beautiful photography; I remember first reading Mummy Mishaps when she was a mum of one, finding her way in the parenting world, and now she has two!; Imperfect Pages takes the most amazing photos on her IPhone, as well as sharing the ups and downs of life with two children. These are a few of my favourite blogs [What happened to Mom-on-a-Wire?], and ones I will continue to read as my adventures continue.

But where do I fit in?

First I thought it was on the birth circuit but then I realised there were people out there already doing an excellent job of blogging about all things birth*. I now share these on my Facebook birth support page. My Facebook profile is a place for the people in my real world, occasionally culled and occasionally added to. School friends, work mates, birth supporters, mummy friends... I don't always share my blog posts on my Facebook page, and I don't share a lot of my status update world on my blog! I read a blog post a few months ago about someone annoyed by 'lazy bloggers' who only post photos and follow memes. It stopped me from posting anything for a long while and I still don't take part in the Gallery or Silent Sunday as much as I did. To be honest, it pissed me off a lot but I didn't want to get into a row about who should blog and who shouldn't. If people don't like what I post, and sometimes maybe it is only memes, then so be it. But it still stopped me for a while...

I don't think I'm a mummy blogger. I didn't go to Cybermummy because I didn't want to. I don't want my blog sponsored (well, I don't have cause right now), I don't do product reviews. I write because sometimes I have a need to share a photo or say more than 140 or 420 characters. Maybe I write so there is a history of my life from the time I became a mummy, actually no, when I became a doula.

Anyway, I decided. My world is massively changing right now. I've given up the world of lecturing and forensic science, for now, and I am pursuing a life of motherhood the American way. This is what this blog will be about, another ex-pat attempting to find a place in a new country, having another baby along the way. Hopefully some of you will stay me, and maybe I will find some others. If not, well, at least I'll always have a history to look back on :)

Thursday, July 14, 2011

I finally left Glasgow yesterday. There were many tears and I keep getting waves of sadness. Time to look onwards and upwards though! We are now in Northumberland, visiting the grandparents, en route to Marlow where we will be staying with my folks for a few weeks.

Today we went to Alnwick Gardens and then Thomas enjoyed going to the beach with Papa and Barley.

Thursday, July 7, 2011

After months of refusing to wear his bike helmet (and possibly spurred on by Dora and Boots wearing their helmets in a recent episode!), Thomas decided today he wanted to try out riding his bike outside...